Why Sport and Politics go hand in hand
Sport and Politics
A few years ago, I was teaching a year 7 class, and the lesson started with the question ‘Politics is?’ on the board. Almost immediately the brightest girl in the class raised her hand and replied ‘boring’ too much mirth and laughter. It was this the gave me the idea that the role of politics needed to be shared to show that it wasn’t just conventional government and select committees but the fact that politics is everywhere. A few weeks later I gave an assembly on the theme of politics and sport. The idea, to take one topic that is universally loved and one that is not and combine the two to show how interrelated they are.
So, this PRESC post will look to take a few iconic events from history and summarise how politics impacted it.
Empire and Politics
As a cricket fan, we are going start with Tony Greig. A white South African who captained the England cricket team. In 1976, he was asked how the England team were going to fare against the West Indies, and he used the rather unfortunate phrase of ‘making them grovel.’ Now, I’m going to give Greig the benefit of the doubt and not cast him as a racist, however as man who benefitted under apartheid and the context of the Black opposition, he faced it was certainly clumsy and naïve choice of words. The result was one of the fiercest bowling assaults possibly witnessed in the game led by the supreme athleticism of Michael Holding and Andy Roberts. For those inclined, the highlights are available on YouTube. It makes for uncomfortable viewing! What is the political link here? The West Indies are a disparate set of nations in the Caribbean who are bandied together to form a cricket team that competes on the global stage. They lay a claim to being the greatest sporting side in all of history. Under the captaincy of a man called Clive Lloyd, petty island squabbles and rivalries were cast aside to project the Caribbean as the dominant force in world cricket. It is important to note that the relationship between West Indies cricket and blackness is deeply intertwined with the history of colonialism, racial identity and cultural pride in the Caribbean. The quintessential English sport of cricket became a symbol of resistance, empowerment and a way of expressing Black identity in both the region and world stage. A few years after Greig’s comments, the West Indies defeated England in all the Test Matches they played and ended up winning the series 5-0. An apocryphal story of the era is of Viv Richards (one of the greatest players of all time) was asked did you ‘Whitewash’ England in reference to the term of winning all games, he is said to have replied ‘nah, we blackwashed them.’ Apt.
Racism and Politics
Most people are aware of the story of Jesse Owens and the 1936 Olympic Games. A quick reminder however is necessary. Owens won four medals the Berlin Games which were held three years into reign of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. He won four gold medals (100m, 200m long jump and the relay) and was famously ignored by the Fuhrer as a Black Man winning in the ultimate sporting event didn’t sit neatly with his belief in a superior Aryan Master race. Furthermore, two years later the German boxer Max Schmeling (who was termed the Nazi boxer but didn’t support their views or become a member of the party) lost his rematch to the African American boxer Joe Louis in front of a sell-out Yankee Stadium in what was again a blow to those who believed in the Social Darwinist theory of racial superiority. However, what is not known about these stories is the treatment that each man was afforded on return to the USA (in the case of Owens) or as he carried on his career (in the case of Louis). Owens received little fanfare upon returning home and was not invited to meet President Franklin D. Roosevelt, unlike some of his white counterparts. He continued to face racial discrimination and struggled to find opportunities in a country that was still deeply segregated. Despite his fame and success, Louis faced racial discrimination. He was often treated as a second-class citizen, encountering segregation and prejudice in many areas of life. His status as a Black athlete did not exempt him from the harsh realities of racism prevalent in America at the time. A previous post has explored the realities of Jim Crow laws in America but to quickly recap it was a legal system that legitimately separated white and black Americans into living ‘separate but equal’ lives yet in reality ensured entrenched racism and racial inequality pervaded all aspects of American society.
Communism and Politics
We live in an era of unprecedented advances in sport science and technology. Yet, there are number of athletic world records that have remained untouched since the early 1980’s. The Czechoslovakian runner Jarmila Kratochvilova ran the 800m in 1.53.28 in 1983 and the East German athlete Marita Koch ran the 400m in 47.6 seconds in 1985. Just for reference at this year’s Paris Olympics Keely Hodgkinson won gold in the 800m in 1.56.72 and Marileidy Paulino won the 400m in 48.17. The problem with some of these records is that they unfortunately come with a huge Asterix by them because the athletes themselves were simply pawns for regimes where state sponsored doping was the norm.
Why? Sportswashing. Both Czechoslovakia and East Germany were communist client states of the Soviet Union. The USSR and the USA were engaged in a literal PRESC battle from 1945 to the former’s demise in 1991. During this era, one way of showing your ideological dominance over your hated foe was defeating them on the sports field. Some famous examples include the ‘Miracle on Ice’ which refers to the unexpected victory of the United States men's ice hockey team over the heavily favoured Soviet Union team during the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York. The game took place on February 22, 1980, and is widely considered one of the greatest sports upsets in history. At the time, the Soviet Union had the most dominant hockey team in the world. They had won gold in four consecutive Winter Olympics (1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976) and were composed of seasoned professionals who were widely regarded as the best hockey players in the world. In contrast, the U.S. team was made up mostly of amateur and college players. They were seen as significant underdogs, especially considering the Soviets had beaten the U.S. 10-3 in an exhibition game just before the Olympics. The U.S. team took a late 4-3 lead and held on in the final minutes despite immense pressure from the Soviets. As the clock wound down, broadcaster Al Michaels delivered his famous line: "Do you believe in miracles? Yes!" The victory was more than just a sports win; it became a symbolic Cold War moment. The underdog U.S. team defeating the Soviet powerhouse was seen as a triumph of American determination, teamwork, and spirit during a time of heightened tension between the two nations.
Chess and Politics
During the Cold War, chess became one of the most intense and symbolic arenas of competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. While chess had long been a popular game, it took on added significance during this period as a proxy battleground for ideological supremacy between the two global superpowers representing the intellectual and cultural superiority of each side. The Soviet Union invested heavily in chess from the 1920s onwards, viewing it as an intellectual sport that symbolized the intelligence and strategic thinking of the Soviet people. Chess schools were established, and the best players were supported by the state. From 1948, when Mikhail Botvinnik became the world champion, until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Soviet players dominated the World Chess Championship.
The 1972 World Chess Championship, held in Reykjavik, Iceland, was one of the most iconic sporting confrontations of the Cold War. American Bobby Fischer, a chess prodigy and individualist from Brooklyn, challenged the reigning world champion, Soviet Boris Spassky, who was backed by the entire Soviet chess establishment. The match was not just about chess, it symbolized the broader ideological struggle between the capitalist West and the communist East. Fischer represented the West’s emphasis on individual genius and creativity, while Spassky represented the Soviet system, which emphasized collective effort and state-sponsored success. Fischer won the match, becoming the first American to win the World Chess Championship. Fischer’s victory resonated far beyond the chessboard, as it became a symbol of U.S. resilience and superiority in a key intellectual arena. The match was covered extensively by the global media and was viewed as an important moment in the cultural Cold War.
Sportswashing isn’t restricted to a bygone era either. Saudi Arabia in recent years have looked to improve their reputation as a Wahabi dominated theocracy into a global travel destination by investing in nearly every mainstream sport including golf, boxing and WWE. A story that shows the power of Politics, Economics and sport can be found by their takeover of Newcastle football club. Initially rejected by the Premier League, the British government at the time led by Boris Johnson put pressure on the Premier League to accept the takeover as multi-billion-pound arms deal with BAE was in jeopardy. Realpolitik at its finest!
I still fondly remember delivering the assembly, id combined it with mass corruption in Southeast Asia and in particular the kleptocratic Ferdinand Marcos and Suharto which got me some irate messages from the local Filipino and Indonesian population. But as we say, facts not feelings! To finish, politics and sport cannot be separated. The examples and anecdotes here are but the tip of an iceberg in terms of stories and evidence. Future articles will look to explore this theme further, but this weekend when you sit down to watch a game of football, rugby, NFL or the like. Peek behind the curtain and look at the murky fingers of politics that permeate every sport.
